If you’re not all Christmas benefit partied-out, head to Detroit Bar tonight for one last good cause hurrah.
 Get to know Crystal Antlers - “Parting Song For The Torn” |
10 Favorite Full Length Releases
Artist: Great Northern
Album: Trading Twilight For Daylight
Label: Eenie Meenie Records
MP3: Home
Buy: Amazon
Artist: The Parson Red Heads
Album: King Giraffe
Label: Yukon Records
MP3: Days Of My Youth
Artist: The Moon Upstairs
Album: Guarding The Golden Apple
Label: Gifted Children
MP3: All Is All
Buy: iTunes
Artist: Ferraby Lionheart
Catch The Brass Ring
Label: Network
MP3: Vermont Avenue
Buy: Amazon
Artist: Biirdie
Album: Catherine Avenue (out digitally 10/30/07, out physically 01/22/08)
Label: Love Minus Zero
MP3: Him
Buy: Amazon
Artist: Division Day
Album: Beartrap Island
Label: Eenie Meenie Records
MP3: Tigers
Buy: Amazon
Artist: Big Business
Album: Here Come The Waterworks
Label: Hydra Head
MP3: Grounds For Divorce
Buy: Amazon
Artist: Sea Wolf
Album: Leaves In The River
Label: Dangerbird Records
MP3: You’re A Wolf
Buy: Amazon
Artist: Tigers Can Bite You
Album: Tigers Can Bite You
Label: Self-Released
MP3: Hawks
Buy: iTunes
Artist: Coco B’s
Album: Coco B’s
Label: Self-Released
MP3: Modern Lover
Buy: iTunes
5 Favorite Ep, 7″, or 12″ Releases
Artist: Tweak Bird
Album: BigBoneSnakeBite 7″
Label: Self-Released
MP3: White Lips
Buy: At a show or on the band’s MySpace
Artist: Crystal Antlers
Album: Until The Sun Dies 7″
Label: Self-Released
MP3: Vexation (not on this particular 7″ because I don’t it ripped yet)
Buy: Greater Los Angeles
Artist: Darker My Love
Album: Darker My Love-Moccasin split 12″
Label: I Hate Rock N Roll
MP3: Hair Decisions (clip)
Buy: At a show or directly from I Hate Rock N Roll
Artist: Devon Williams
Album: A Truce/Elevator 7″
Label: LA Record
MP3: Elevator
Buy: Greater Los Angeles
Artist: Francisco The Man!
Album: Francisco The Man! EP
Label: Self-Released
MP3: Lord Knows I’m Weak
Buy: iTunes
IfAN: So now that you have wrapped up your whirlwind November of triple residencies and have given away your new album Stunts, have you had anytime to sit back and reflect on it all…what worked, what didn’t?
Malcolm: I don’t quite know how to answer that one yet, but if the question was more along the lines of, “Would you do it all over again?”, than the answer would be yes. I think we could and would do it for every record release we do. It was everything we could hope for: we played a bunch of shows and saw over a hundred of our friends’ bands share the stage with us over the course of the month and we got to have a lot of control over who we played with — so it was like booking our own rock club with bands from all over the state.
Seriously, there were so many good bands and so many old friends we got to see! On the other hand, there were some cool new ones … Some of the best new bands (new to us) we ran across were Here Here and Silian Rail from San Francisco and Correatown and Henry Clay People from LA and this band from Fresno we’ve grown to love called Circles and Circles.
It was just great to show up every week and see some familiar faces and be in “your club” and get to relax and really shoot the shit. As opposed to a tour where you might end up in a club you don’t know with bands you don’t know and with people you don’t know. And, this is the worst, is when you don’t like the club, the bands or the people. Than you’re totally miserable for the 5 hours you’re stuck there.
This felt way more special and warm. Like we were all part of some secret club. If I could change anything, hmmm, maybe we would have had one of the residencies take place in a treehouse and there would have been a secret password.
IfAN: Any idea how many miles you put on your van in November?
Malcolm: A shit ton. We figured out one day, but I am not about to do the math again.
IfAN: Do you have any idea of the number of people who downloaded the Stunts tracks from the four blogs?
Malcolm: I have no idea. Most of you guys posted out the mp3s to yousendit or whatever file service. And I don’t know if those things have stats trackers. So your guess is probably as good as mine, if not better.
Do you know?
We’re just happy you guys were down to do the whole thing and help us get our record out there and in people’s ears. Sometimes that is the hardest thing to do. I find myself being confronted by band names all the time that I know — but I don’t know a single tune of theirs! Which is weird. Strange that a band name can travel farther than the actual music.
Anyways — I think it is important to try and keep your music and your “name” in synch. Like it is great when people know about your band and stuff ’cause they read about it on a blog, but it is a way bigger compliment to us if they’re singing your songs in their shower.
Which, by basically distributing our album, I think you helped us do.
IfAN: Do you think giving away the album had a impact on the CD sales of Stunts, both online from your website and from the merch table?
Malcolm: How many times have you seen an ad or a promo for a free ipod? Let’s just say Radio Free Silverlake and Aquarium Drunkard and You Set the Scene and Inflight at Night each gave away a hundred ipods. Do you think it would significantly decrease the overall demand for ipods?
I don’t. Plus ipods get stolen damn quick and need to be replaced. And records aren’t ipods.
But in short: no. I don’t think downloading a record and owning a record are the same thing. They are both cool in their own ways, but not the same.
And even if by giving something away we diminished it’s value and potential revenues and while it would be awesome for us to sell one bajillion copies of the record, that’s not really why we made the record. WE made it for people to hear. Which is what seems to be happening.
So we’re happy.
We’ve built a coffee table out of all the discs we have in our studio. If we can whittle it down to the size of an end table by the end of the year. That’d be just grand. We’d like to move enough of them so we have some scratch (and some room) to start working on another one. Our goals, BUSINESS-WISE, are very modest.
What was cool about the blog residency thing was that people got to wrap their ears around the music and make their own decision about whether or not they actually wanted to buy a peice of plastic manufactured by some kids in Fresno.
IfAN: What’s coming up for Rademacher in 2008? You guys have hit LA and SF pretty hard, can Orange County, San Diego, Arizona, Portland, and Seattle expect to see you guys at their locals clubs?
Malcolm: We’ve done a fair amount of touring ourselves in the last couple of years. I can’t say we’re planning on playing San Diego or Orange County anytime soon, but we’re planning on doing the northwest in February and the East Coast in March. I have a lot of good friends in New York and that’s about the time the weather starts to get good again. I also want to go to Philadelphia, because I have never been except once by accident when I got lost on the way from DC to NYC. And that sucked.
Rademacher play at The Echo this Friday, December 21st and will be joined by Kim Haden of Light FM on keyboards. Also they will be recording the show for Spaceland Recordings.
Download “If You Got Some Magic” (mp3) from Rademacher’s new album, Stunts, of which they will be celebrating the release of this Friday at The Echo.
No People, Belly Button, and a dude from The Mapes. Originally uploaded by The Mapes
There is something inherently fun about Japanese punk rock bands, their excitement and general enthusiasm when touring the States is utterly contagious, and if you are in the crowd and can’t have fun at one of their shows, there is something wrong with you.
Tomorrow two Japanese punk rock bands, No People and Belly Button, finish up their US tour in San Pedro at La Conga. Presented by The Rise and Fall and Slack Mafia, the show is rounded out by San Pedro locals, Killer Dreamer (who I think hate me), Drinkers Purgatory from Anaheim, and Autistic Youth who are on tour from Portland.
Download No People’s “Papercut Girl” (mp3) from their ep, Boys On The Edge
and Belly Button’s “School Girl” (mp3) from their self-titled ep.
Saturday, Dec 15th @ La Conga - 465 W 7th St . Los Angeles, CA 90731 - 18+ / $5
I’ve never been a big fan of lists (hold it…I just had some deja vu), but this year due to the fact that I have started to contribute to the OC Weekly’s (a Village Voice publication) Heard Mentality blog, I was offered a opportunity to vote in the 2007 Village Voice Pazz & Jop poll (I’m not special, something like 1500 people are asked to vote in it), I decided “hey why not” and submitted my 10 favorite albums of the year. Picking 10 was pretty hard. I used the deciding factor of whether I had purchased an album on vinyl as a tie breaker so that I could pair my list down to 10, thus cutting Apostle Of Hustle - Nation Anthem Of Nowhere, Baroness - The Red Album, and Blonde Redhead - 23, even though I really liked all three of these releases as well.
Artist: Dungen
Album: Tio Bitar
Label: Kemado
MP3: Gör Det Nu
Buy: Insound | Amazon
Artist: Earthless
Album: Rhythms From A Cosmic Sky
Label: Tee Pee Records
MP3: Godspeed (edit)
Buy: Insound | Amazon
Artist: LCD Soundsystem
Album: Sound Of Silver
Label: DFA Records
MP3: All My Friends
Buy: Insound | Amazon
Artist: Amy Winehouse
Album: Back To Black
Label: Republic
MP3: You Know I’m No Good
Buy: Insound | Amazon
Artist: Bruce Springsteen
Album: Magic
Label: Sony
MP3: Radio Nowhere
Buy: Insound | Amazon
Artist: Against Me!
Album: New Wave
Label: Sire
MP3: New Wave (clip)
Artist: Emily Jane White
Album: Dark Undercoat
Label: Double Negative Records
MP3: Dagger
Buy: iTunes
Artist: Pieta Brown
Album: Remember The Sun
Label: One Little Indian Records
MP3: In My Mind I Was Talking To Loretta
Buy: Amazon
Artist: Minus The Bear
Album: Planet Of Ice
Label: Suicide Squeeze
MP3: Throwin’s Shapes
Buy: Insound | Amazon
Artist: Queens Of The Stone Age
Album: Era Vulgaris
Label: Interscope
MP3: Sick, Sick, Sick
Buy: Insound | Amazon
Le Switch Originally uploaded by CharlieChu
Well it pretty much was a free show, as I would be surprised if anyone there actually paid to get in, but it should have been advertised as a free show. When you got there was a list that required two clipboards, the A - L and M - Z, but inside the El Rey, the crowd was pretty sparse. I think if people just had to show up and it was first come first served, there probably would have been a lot better turn out.
One other note, the LA Weekly’s projections behind some the bands (the ones who didn’t have the foresight to bring their own projections) were really distracting, it was like watching the Mezzanine Owls playing in front of iPod commercial.
But other than those two gripes, it was really nice to see these bands on a big stage with professional sound, and it complemented their Bedroom Labels feature in the current edition of the paper nicely. Hopefully the Weekly attempts this type of locally focused show again and can make a few adjustments to get more folks out.
Oh, one more gripe. Please start the show a little later…7:30pm is way too early.
-
Blackstrap - Steal My Horses and Run
Initially released in Europe in October 2006, Blackstrap’s second full length, Steal My Horses and Run, is finally seeing it’s official release in the U.S. via New York’s Tee Pee Records.
At first pass it would be easy to write off Steal My Horses and Run as just another retread of the JAMC and My Bloody Valentine catalogs, that is if it weren’t so well executed and/or if you weren’t able to make to the last quarter of the album where the band really opens things up with some more diversified song writing. Coming across much the same as Black Rebel Motorcycle Club did on their first album, Blackstrap wear their influences (Velvet Underground, My Bloody Valentine, Neu!, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Stereolab and Suicide) on their sleeve, writing songs that would fit on any of the aforementioned bands’ albums, only with much better production.
...continue reading » -
Triclops! - Out Of Africa
Made up of former and current members of Bottles and Skulls, Fleshies, Lower Forty-Eight and a drummer who is in too many other bands to list, San Francisco’s Triclops! are a veritable hybrid of the Bay Area underground punk/hardcore scene.
Triclops!’s “trademark” are their vocals, which for about half of Out Of Africa are run through broken solid state amps with a phaser explosion - achieving a sound that I can only describe as how the Mars Volta’s Cedric Bixler-Zavala would sound singing underwater. While slightly off-putting on first listen, the phasered vocals effects - delievered by Fleshies’ Johnny - become pretty aurally addictive over the course of the album, so much so that when the effect is not being used, I found myself anxiously awaiting it’s return.
...continue reading » -
Princeton - Bloomsbury EP
Yes, basing songs upon classic literary works and-or their creators at first always seems pretentious, even ColinMeloyian, but hey, if it was good enough for the likes of Iron Maiden and David Axelrod who are we to disagree. Enter Bloomsbury, the new 4-song EP from Eagle Rock, CA’s own shaggy academes turned shaggy indie rockers, Princeton. All glib - borderline sarcastic introductions aside, Bloomsbury is well put together and accessible, surprisingly so when you consider the lyrical focus on early 20th century London intellectuals and the long list of instrumentation.
...continue reading » -
Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul - Collectors Edition
Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul is arguably one of Redding’s best albums, if not one of soul music’s best. It presents a cohesion beyond the usual collection of singles and b-sides common of the time, and it also set the stage for what would become his most recognizable and influential yet ultimately tragic song, “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay”. In many ways Otis Blue is the last Otis Redding album, not technically as there’s his duet album with Carla Thomas and the posthumous Dock of The Bay, but in terms of an album that’s Otis through and through, not to mention proof of what could have been to come from the young Georgian, this is the one.
...continue reading » -
The Heavy - Great Vengeance Furious Fire
heav·y; Of great intensity, Having great power or force, Indulging to a great degree, Of great significance or profundity…
Not since the The Clash has a band’s name been as succinct and appropriate as The Heavy. These four guys and one gal hailing from the town of Bath (UK) have an arsenal of sweet baadasssss songs that transport you back to a time when blow was big, hair was bigger and Dracula was black. However you slice, dice, cut or sort it, their album Great Vengeance and Furious Fire, released in the UK last year and here in the states just a few weeks ago, is one goddamn heavy piece of work.
...continue reading » -
The Black Keys - Attack and Release
It can be an all-too-common occurrence for those whose musical tastes extend beyond, or completely avoid, commercial radio, that a band who one champions as underappreciated gets the recognition they deserve… but for the wrong album! And then subsequently tours ad nauseam until releasing another album to a fickle public who may or may not care anymore. Too many examples spring to mind, but my elitist and ultimately meaningless point is that while I was worried the same fate laid waiting for The Black Keys with 2006’s Magic Potion, I was thankfully wrong. It’s not that MP wasn’t a good album, it just wasn’t the album (see; Rubber Factory), but now with their latest release I can rest calmly with the assurance that The Black Keys’ (Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney) upward trajectory is analogous with the mastery that is Attack and Release.
...continue reading »
Upcoming Shows
IfAN on blip.fm
- Don’t You Know?
Music Download:
Artist:
Company: Luckyhorse Industries (2008-02-26) - L.A.
Music Download:
Artist:
Company: Buddyhead Records (2008-02-01) - Get It On
Music Download:
Artist:
Company: Cooking Vinyl USA (2007-10-23) - White Winter Hymnal
Music Download:
Artist:
Company: Sub Pop Records (2008-06-03) - Summers And Autumns
Music Download:
Artist:
Company: Drag City (2008-04-22)
Random Bytes
- WordPress for iPhone, now I’m a little more interested in getting one of these
- WordPress 2.6 released
- Acres of Books in Long Beach sale starts on Thursday (7/17)
- Bit.ly: URL shortener with built-in tracking
- Maria Taylor Latest To Have Tour Gear Stolen; tonight’s Echoplex show now a benefit
- The battle between Web. 2.0 and PR rages on
- Hi, are you in PR? Yes. Then read this before sending me or anyone else another email press release of pitch.
- Video Savant: Love’s Your Mind and We Belong Together
- Music Marketing Firm Topspin Media Raises Funds
- (RED) Creates Music Delivery System
IfAN Elsewhere
- TRUST AND LOVE | TIJUANA KNIFE …
Where in Long Beach is your band most likely to be found when you aren’t playing a show? Dan Cady (vocals): Alex’s Bar or the Pike—Alex was our original bass player so we just hang out there. It’s just kind of home base for us. And the Pike becau - Last Night: The Muslims, Crash …
This is cool: UCI student, Sam Farzin, has started to put on music shows at the UC Irvine’s The Phoenix Grille, one of the campus’ dining spots. Located in what one of the members of Wounded Lion described as “the anus” of UCI (you have to twist a - Last Night: The Henry Clay Peo …
My apologies to The Year Zero, whose set I missed due The Paper Planes getting a late start at The Puka Bar. I heard your performance was drenched in sonic goodness and that The Henry Clays are jealous of your harmonizing capabilities. I arrived just as L - Last Night: Soft Hands, The Yo …
While at The Prospector last night, some friends and I were discussing how the venue has really been on its game as of late, consistently hosting the best shows Long Beach has to offer. It is pretty much guaranteed that any night of the week you can walk - Last Night: Baroness and The R …
Ahh, the Showcase Theatre. I hadn't been there in almost seven years. The Showcase was the club that I started going to shows at when I was in high school, back then they had all the best punk rock acts that were coming through town, unlike today. These d
LA Blogs
LA Clubs
LBC Blogs
LBC Clubs
OC Blogs
OC Clubs
Archives
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- January 2006
